FORMER BEARS COACH GIBRON DIES

Don Pierson, Tribune Pro Football WriterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Abe Gibron, the bigger-than-life football player and Bears coach who endeared himself to Chicago despite a losing record, died Tuesday morning at his Florida home after a long illness. He had turned 72 on Monday.

"I know he's happy. He and (George) Halas are up there and have their football game all organized and Halas is teaching Abe some new words," said Susie Gibron, Abe's wife of 38 years.

Caught in the transition between the Dick Butkus-Gale Sayers era and the Walter Payton era, Gibron compiled an 11-30-1 record from 1972 to '74 and was fired, but his stature as a career football man never wavered.

Gibron was one of the most recognizable and colorful characters in NFL history. In Chicago, he quickly became the city's most popular sports figure, paving the way for subsequent marketing with a Ford commercial filmed with a model named Melody.

Listed at 5-feet-11-inches and 250 pounds as a guard and nose tackle from 1949 to '59, he weighed more than 300 pounds before he became head coach of the Bears. Yet he used to race players and often beat them in short sprints despite his shape and age.

Former Cleveland Browns coach Paul Brown once said Gibron "had the fastest and quickest charge I ever saw." When he played guard fro m 1950 to '56, the Browns won three NFL championships and played in six title games. Gibron went to four Pro Bowls before ending his career with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1957 and the Bears in 1958 and '59. That he failed to make the Hall of Fame was a particular disappointment to him. The official NFL Encyclopedia just published lists him among the 300 best players of all time.

As an assistant coach with the Washington Redskins and then with the Bears under Halas and Jim Dooley, Gibron was reknowned as an expert teacher of both offensive and defensive line play. As a head coach, he got only three years with a Bears team that had sunk to desperate depths before George Halas Jr. hired Jim Finks as general manager in 1974.

Gibron had Sayers in training camp in 1972, but the great running back never was able to play a game for him because of a knee injury. Likewise, the great Butkus was hobbled by knee problems, limped through the 1972 season and lasted only nine games into the 1973 season before retiring.

Gibron's leading rusher his first season was Bobby Douglass, who set an NFL record for quarterbacks by running for 968 yards while passing for only 1,246 to receivers such as George Farmer, Earl Thomas and Charles Wade. The following two years, the Bears' top running backs were Carl Garrett and Ken Grandberry. Gibron was fired the year before the Bears drafted Payton.

Fiercely loyal to his players, but realistic, Gibron often referred to them in unprintable euphemisms for poor players, then would quickly add: "But they're my (poor players)."

In 1975, Gibron coached the Chicago Wind of the World Football League to a 1-4 record before that league folded. He joined John McKay as an assistant coach for the new Tampa Bay Buccaneers and later scouted and coached for Chuck Knox and the Seattle Seahawks.

Gibron's philosophy of football was as simple as it was blunt.

"Football is a hitting game," he said in 1973. "It's a violent game. That's why people like it. There's a bit of sadist in all of us. They come out on Sunday to see Butkus knock somebody's head off. Other people are starting to realize that now. Even down in Dallas (where Tom Landry's reputation was finesse), they cut out the Sermon on the Mount and hired some tough guys like Ernie Stautner and Mike Ditka to teach hitting football. For 10 years, Dallas had the greatest personnel in football, and they only won one Super Bowl."

So committed to hitting was Gibron that he refused to let even the placekickers miss the fun. He made Mirro Roder, a Czechoslovakian-born bricklayer trying out as a kicker, hit the blocking sleds one practice. After watching Roder, who barely knew English let alone blocking technique, a disgusted Gibron groused in his gutteral voice: "No wonder you (expletive) lost the war!"

Gibron suffered strokes in December and February and was confined to his home in Belleair, Fla. He leaves three children--William, Kahlil and Matina--three grandchildren, and two sisters. Visitation is Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. and the funeral service is noon Saturday at the Moss-Feaster Funeral Home, 13401 Indian Rocks Rd., Largo, Fla. 34644.

Born Sept. 22, 1925 in Michigan City, Ind., to Lebanese immigrants, Gibron joined the Marines when he was 18 and went to Valparaiso and Purdue after World War II. He kept his permanent home in Michigan City while staying in a Chicago apartment or hotel during football season. His father worked in a foundry and gave him this advice: "Dance as fast as you can dance. Run as far as you can run. Drink as much as you can drink. Do what you can. Be as big as you are."